YEAH I KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANS, THANKS GUYS
And AGAIN, just because Kaneko's Ultraman stuff isn't pretentious doesn't mean his Gamera and Godzilla movies aren't. It means he's approaching Ultraman differently. ALSO, I don't think his Ultraman output should be used as a shining example since he didn't even write any of his Ultraman episodes.
Everything he's
written has a particular kind of self importance to it that isn't only glaring, but at its worst, it takes away from my enjoyment of the film (GMK being the biggest example).
Look, I'm a Kaneko fan. He's made some of my favorite movies of ALL time. But he's also the guy who has thrown his own crew under the bus, talked sh*t about the old Gamera films with their creator in the same room, said he took the job for Gamera because it was "his chance to make a Godzilla movie" (hence why they feel more like Godzilla than Gamera at times), talks about how Godzilla should "always be pure evil," slammed the fanbase and got himself blacklisted from G-Fest, (which I actually found a certain bit of humor in because I happened to agree with him and found the hyper sensitive backlash on G-Fan's behalf to be downright idiotic), etc. Sorry, but to me, those are pretentious moves on his part.
The guy is a blowhard... I know there are Kaneko fanboys all over, but that's ALWAYS how he's come off to me. It seemed to get really bad around Gamera 3 and after.
I'm a big fan, but he reminds me a lot of Nolan in a few ways. Great film maker, seems like a nice guy who is a TRUE AND BLUE fan, but in a lot of cases when it comes to his own material, he comes off as having his head up his ass and sniffing his own farts.
And I'll say it a third time in case nobody is paying attention. I'M A FAN, and I don't even think that "pretentious" is always a bad thing... every artist should be allowed a certain amount of pretension. I'm just pointing out that more often than not, this is how he's come off to me.